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Illness during pregnancy and bacterial vaginosis are associated with in-utero HIV-1 transmission

Carey Farquhar1, Dorothy Mbori-Ngacha, Julie Overbaugh

  • 1Department of Medicine, University of Washington, 325 Ninth Avenue, Box 359909, Seattle, WA 98104, USA. cfarq@u.washington.edu

AIDS (London, England)
|December 3, 2009
PubMed

HIV-1 transmission in utero accounts for 20-30% of vertical transmission events in breast-feeding populations. In a prospective study of 463 HIV-1-infected mothers and infants, illness during pregnancy was associated with 2.6-fold increased risk of in-utero HIV-1 transmission [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.2-5.8] and bacterial vaginosis with a three-fold increase (95% CI 1.0-7.0) after adjusting for maternal HIV-1 viral load. Interventions targeting these novel risk factors could lead to more effective prevention of transmission during pregnancy.

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